The present disclosure relates to acronyms, an acronym-management program for addressing the correspondence between the acronyms and expanded forms thereof, an acronym-management device, an expanded-display program, and an expanded-display device.
Acronyms are sometimes used because writing out terms comprising a plurality of words and phrases in expanded form is redundant, the acronyms being formed by connecting capital letters together or excerpting portions of the terms. A prior art method involves selecting expanded forms corresponding to acronyms, each of the expanded forms being selected based on the topic of a reference in which the acronym is included.
However, there are cases in which a single acronym is used as an acronym for a plurality of different expanded forms, even within a single field (the same technological field). For example, the acronym “MFP” may be used as an acronym for different expanded forms such as “multifunction peripheral,” “multifunction product,” and “multifunction printer.” Therefore, automatically determining that one acronym is the acronym for one expanded form may not be appropriate.